Such a heavenly day! Aunt and I are sitting on the balcony and resting. The opera begins tomorrow. Most of the people are in church and the street is quite quiet, and empty save for a few pretty peasant girls in gay colors walking the streets. Lots of things have happened since I last wrote; we drove over to a fair in a little town yesterday which was very amusing,--cows and pigs, boots, pipes, and all kinds of things for sale. Then we went into a little inn and had beer and danced with the peasants. It was lively, but rather different from my last ball at the American Embassy after the big dinner served on silver and gold plates, and dancing with “Dips” and princes. Aunt, my dear old cart-horse, tired me all out in Venice. She instructed me properly like a well-brought-up American girl, and took me about sightseeing with the Red Book in her hand, every minute you were not there, into all the old churches until I feel I never want to go to a sanctuary again. You ask me what I liked best in Venice. Well! After you, sir, perhaps the marvelous bronze horses. I never got tired of looking at them, the most perfect ones in the world, and I adore horses. Did you know they were first known to have crowned one of the triumphal arches in Rome? They journeyed to Constantinople in the time of Constantine for the Hippodrome, but Doge Enrico Dandolo brought them back to Venice when he conquered Constantinople in 1204. But this was not all. Napoleon wished them for his Arch in the Place du Carrousel and not until 1815 were they returned to San Marco by Francis I of Austria, to whose portion Venice fell in the settlement. Now can you say the humming-bird has not been sucking wisdom instead of sugar from the flowers of Venice! And next best, perhaps, I enjoyed the paintings, especially the auburn-haired Tintorettos, because Aunt too, has just such beautiful hair. * * * * * A. D. TO POLLY _Rome, July._ Jonkheer Jan has had a house warming in his new apartment in the top of the huge Falconieri Palace, hanging high above the Tiber, with the Farnesina opposite and the Janiculum, and the city far below. He has a sunny terrace with the plants already climbing up a trellis and a little set of rooms which he is beginning to furnish. Today several congenial souls met up there for tea and music, and then looked out over the city and the river which lay mapped out below us. He was quite devoted to our blue-eyed Sybil.